The invention pertains to digital data processing and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for facilitating digital data information storage and retrieval operations, e.g., data create, read, update, and delete operations.
In today's marketplace, many advanced data management systems focus on providing back-end support for data storage and retrieval. They are generally geared towards developers, who use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) supplied with the packages to write “one-off” applications (e.g., with Java Swing) that permit users to create, access, delete and otherwise “interface” with the data. While this facilitates (and, indeed, necessitates) customization, a drawback is increased time and expense at inception and throughout the lifetime of each custom application. This has led to slow adoption of many advanced data management technologies by business enterprises and the like.
One advanced data management technology that is coming to the fore is semantic data management. These are technologies that utilize knowledge space-specific vocabularies to improve data retrieval, if not also data storage. In addition to the hurdles discussed above, however, current semantic data packages typically do not provide security features desired by many enterprises (e.g., financial institutions). The packages focus, instead, on improving data retrieval and, as a consequence, necessitate increased attention to security by application developers.
An object of the invention is to provide improved methods and apparatus for digital data processing.
A further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as facilitate digital data information storage and retrieval. A related object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as facilitate data creation, retrieval, update and deletion (“CRUD”) operations.
A further related object is to provide such methods and apparatus as facilitate the development and life-time maintenance of data management applications.
A still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as ensure data security.
A yet still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as are adapted for use with semantic data systems, as well as other advanced data technologies.